The Moment. In this daily feature until Election Day, the National Post captures a telling moment in time from the 2015 campaign trail.

It was yet another of the many, many polls released for Canada’s 42nd election, but on Thursday this one for La Presse showed the Conservatives in the lead.

The Tories had the support of 35.4%, well ahead of the Liberals (26.3%) and the New Democrats (24.5%) in the survey of 2,343 Canadians at the start of the week.

Of course, on Tuesday the Liberals were No. 1. Last week, the NDP were in the lead. On Sept. 17, three polls came out, each with a different party in the lead.

“We don’t really know what’s going on, and we don’t know what’s going on because this has never happened before,” said David Moscrop, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia.

What’s never happened before, of course, is a federal race in which the three main parties are neck-and-neck for power.

It’s a “tie,” a “stalemate,” or a “knife fight in a telephone booth,” as pollster Nik Nanos said this month.

While pre-election Canada may have seen wild shifts in party support, once the writ was dropped in August, Canadians made up their minds.

And no amount of scandal or gaffes seems to make a difference. For every NDP candidate saying they don’t know what Auschwitz is, there’s a Conservative saying that there’s an “agenda” to fill Europe with Muslims.

Where casual election-watchers see a three-way tie, though, the Tories likely see possibility.

Conservative voters, as a rule, count more. The Tories are favoured by seniors, who show up to vote in record numbers. And they also do well among low-population rural ridings, where ballots carry more weight.

But Canada also has a giant well of apathetic people who might be drawn to the polls by a high-stakes election.

“Maybe it will lead to more mobilization or engagement amongst people who might ordinarily not care too much about politics,” said political scientist Lori Thorlackson at the University of Alberta.

In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, for instance, Barack Obama’s decisive victory was delivered partly on a wave of young voters who had not bothered to turn out for John Kerry in 2004.

Or it could be decided by the vast demographic of “Christmas Eve shoppers” — voters who pick a candidate on the way to the polling station.

“There are going to be people who make up their minds on Election Day — that is a thing — it’s shocking for people who are partisans,” said Moscrop.

Tom Flanagan has run campaigns for both the Alberta Wildrose and the federal Conservatives, and he predicted an issue is going to crop up to make the difference in the next four weeks.

“I wouldn’t expect a three-way tie to last till the end. It’s a holding pattern. But someone will probably pull away at the end,” he said.

Or not, and Canada might simply limp into an Election Day surprise on Oct. 19.

In the recent U.K. general election, polls consistently showed Labour and the Conservatives neck-and-neck with about 33% of the vote. Pundits spoke of a hung Parliament, coalitions and more elections.

Then, on May 8, Great Britain and Northern Ireland awoke to a Conservative majority. Labour may have scored 9.3 million votes to the Conservatives’ 11.3 million, but in a first-past-the-post system that translated to a seat gap of 98.

A minority government may still lie in Canada’s future, and it could take any form.

Notably, while the Liberals and the NDP are certainly dismissing a coalition with the Conservatives, the only thing they’ve said definitely is that they wouldn’t let “Mr. Harper” continue as prime minister.

So we could end up with an NDP-Liberal coalition, a Conservative minority with a new leader at the helm, or a surprise NDP or Conservative majority.

Or, “it could very well be in the spring that we end up with another election,” said Moscrop.

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